Chapter proposals are invited for the edited book Transgender Literary Theory and Criticism. We are seeking chapters that show how transgender theory can provide novel insights for developing literary theory and conducting literary criticism, as well as chapters that analyze specific literary works that explore transgender identity and experience from the perspectives of a variety of literary theories. A sampling of confirmed contributions follows:

“Daring to Imagine: Trans Climate Change Literature,” Katie Hogan, PhD, Department of English, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA

Interested authors should send a 300-word abstract, 200-word biography, and sample of a previously published chapter or article to Dr. Douglas Vakoch at dvakoch@ciis.edu by July 15, 2020. Authors will be notified whether their proposals are accepted by July 30, 2020. First drafts of full chapters are due by November 1, 2020, and final versions are due January 15, 2021. Both transgender and cisgender contributors are welcome. Preference will be given to authors who have completed their doctorates. Only previously unpublished works will be considered. We seek a broadly international group of scholarly contributors.

Chapters may draw on transgender theory and/or one or more traditional schools of literary theory, including but not limited to queer theory, critical theory, feminism, psychoanalysis, cultural materialism, poststructuralism, contextualism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, posthumanism, transhumanism, transfeminism, ecocriticism, and queer ecologies. Chapters that develop original transgender literary theories are especially welcome. Proposals to write the introduction to the book are also encouraged.

This volume is modeled after Dr. Vakoch’s latest book Transecology: Transgender Perspectives on Environment and Nature (2020). Contributors to that book used major concepts from gender studies and ecology to examine intimacy, connection, exclusion, identity, and emplacement. For example, these chapters examined Susan Stryker’s notion of trans identity as “ontologically inescapable,” Stacy Alaimo’s notion of “trans-corporeality” as a “contact zone” between humans and the environment, Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson’s history of the development of queer rural spaces, Judith Butler’s analysis of gender as “performative,” with those who are not “properly gendered” being seen as “abjects”—and Julia Serano’s contrasting rejection of gender as performance.

Dr. Vakoch’s previous books include Literature and Ecofeminism: Intersectional and International Voices (2018) and Feminist Ecocriticism: Environment, Women, and Literature (2012). He serves as editor of Ecocritical Theory and Practice, published by Lexington Books, an imprint of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group.